


Normal Is Relative

by karmascars



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Angst, Gen, Suicide, Wincest if you squint
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-11-12
Updated: 2017-11-12
Packaged: 2019-02-01 08:03:34
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,083
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12700767
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/karmascars/pseuds/karmascars
Summary: a vision of the end.





	Normal Is Relative

**Author's Note:**

> i'm mad and i'm crying and if anybody needs me i'll be in the angry dome

_If freedom is a length of rope,_ Dean thinks, recalling what Castiel once told him, _and God wants me to hang myself with it… What is hope?_

He’s sitting cross-legged on the hood of the Impala, gripping the neck of a bottle in a brown paper bag. Sun beats down through the taut and faded plaid across his back, the Led Zeppelin shirt beneath it, into skin that’s just so goddamn tired.

He’s never operated without some modicum of hope before. They never ran out of it. Not even when things were at their most dire. Dean had—

Son of a bitch, he’d come to _rely_ on coming back from the dead.

Did Sam ever warn him about that?

He doesn’t know. Probably.

Thinking about Sam hurts too much right now, so Dean knocks back another ripe swig of whatever this is he grabbed. Ugh, it tastes like the bottom of a trash can. In Vegas.

Gazing out over the empty mesa, Dean remembers Sammy laughing about the Grand Canyon and his farty donkey, but the memory lodges somewhere in his chest and becomes a lump. It backs up the bourbon into his tear ducts. That’s what this is.

That’s all this is…

Sam’s not Dead. No capital D. He’ll be back eventually, and Dean will be able to breathe again. Dean will be able to drink water and eat food and live instead of sit here with his bottle and his thoughts... Right?

He scoffs at himself. _Right. Yeah. You keep dreamin' that dream, buddy._

Tilting back the bottle, he drains the last of it.

Squints into it. Definitely empty.

“Welp,” he slurs to no one, “guess it’zat time.”

Slowly, deliberately, he scoots down off the hood. Cranking back, he hurls the bottle in a graceful, amber arc away from his chosen route. Then he whirls back toward the driver’s seat.

The air drags colder into his lungs. He yanks the door open, throws himself inside, and slams it shut. Her interior is chillier than it has any right to be out here. Dean wonders, with maudlin and a watery sort of self-hatred, if it means Sam is around.

“Don’t tell me not to do this,” he whispers. High-pitched. Unintentional. “You shut your dead-ass cakehole.”

He cranks the key already in the ignition, and Baby roars to life.

It’s half a mile over flat plain, through two gates, past one security checkpoint Dean doesn’t think he’ll see much trouble from. He’s not worried if they shoot out her tires. Not this time.

He’s finding that serenity. The Impala picks up speed, kicking up plumes of dust, turning herself into a sleek black rocket burning through the outer space of Arizona. Inside, there’s no music, nothing but the fine-tuned workings of her and the way she’s always held Dean, like Mom probably did, soothing and protecting her little damaged family.

His lip wobbles, but he chews on it. Not long now.

The first gate is no contest. Baby is made of solid American steel, and she eats that gate for lunch. The second one is a little sturdier—but the dent it leaves in her front fender, the scrape up her hood, both just fuel the irrationality growing within Dean. He might scream at some point. He’s blinking pretty rapidly, trying to see through tears.

He won’t stop. He can’t stop. But goddamn, he loves this car.

Just like he loved…

Dean tries to suck in a breath and chokes on it, whining out his nose, squeezing tears instead.

“Goddamnit,” he grits. “God fucking damnit, Sam. Why didn’t you duck.” It’s not a question. There was no ducking to be done. There was simply that mechanism, the dude, and Sam, and then _so much blood—_

A wild animal cry tears loose from Dean and he slams himself against the wheel.

Another strangled yell, louder, angrier. The Impala cuts snake tracks in the dirt road.

 _“Sammy,”_ he breathes, because he has to.

He doesn’t know how people live with this, this _malignance_ in their chests, like something got ripped out and replaced with black ooze and tentacles and more pain than Dean knows what to do with. He’s been in pain before. He’s lost people before. Hell, he’s lost _Sam_ before.

But he’s never lost hope.

Not really.

Not until now.

Ahead, he can see the checkpoint. They’ve been warned about him. Sunlight glints off barrels and side mirrors as backup finds their positions, aiming down the sights at him. It kinda feels like a movie, like he should be Clint Eastwood or Christopher Walken or Bruce Willis. He’s already in a classic car. Shit, shoulda had a pair of aviators.

A chuckle bubbles up through the thick, black mass inside him. The pedal is already to the floor, but Dean taps it down even harder. Just to make sure. He takes out the guardhouse and half a cop car, and they don’t manage to blow out Baby’s tires. Sucks to be them.

Growing darker before him, laid out like a black ribbon at a funeral in the desert, is the Grand Canyon herself.

“Hey, hey, mama, said the way you move,” Dean croons under his breath. Zepp is his default on the ground. Metallica only works in midair, for some reason. “Gon’ make you sweat, gon’ make you groove...”

He sits back. The speed is so relative, inside the car he’s sitting still. Her leather is such a comfort around him, the grip of her wheel in his hand, even the anxious whine she’s started projecting from so long at her top speed.

Plus, sand. “Yeah, I know you hate sand.” He pats the wheel fondly. “It’s okay, girl.” A fresh wave of tears chokes him up, but he swallows them hard. “Where we’re going, we don’t need roads.”

He bets it looks gorgeous from below, when Baby shoots over the edge. There’s no fanfare. No warning signs.

He simply leaves the ground behind.

Through the rush of adrenaline, the roller coaster tip down into the final descent, he remembers the penultimate scene from Finding Dory—and he will never, ever apologize for loving that fish—when the truck breaks through the trees and Louis Armstrong starts crooning _What A Wonderful World._ Dean feels weightless, pressed up against Baby’s ceiling. He wonders if Sam, like Hank, will hold him as he falls.

Nothing happens before the impact. Nobody stops time to save him. It’s….

It’s normal.

Sammy would have wanted it that way.


End file.
